H. J. Massingham

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Harold John Massingham (1888 –1952) was a prolific British writer on matters to do with the countryside and agriculture. He was also a published poet. He was the son of the journalist H. W. Massingham, and brother of the journalist and writer Hugh Massingham.

He was one of a group of 'ruralist' British writers of the period; Massingham's friend Adrian Bell, a farmer in Suffolk, was another prominent writer. They have attracted subsequent attention both as precursors to later developments, such as organic farming, and because of their political entanglements in the context of the 1930s (with the example of Henry Williamson as a supporter of Oswald Mosley). Massingham himself wrote in a vein compatible with the Social Credit and distributist ideas current at the time (The Tree of Life from 1943 is still cited).

He was one of the twelve members of the Kinship of Husbandry, set up in 1941 by Rolf Gardiner, a society dedicated to countryside revival in a post-war world. According to academics Richard Moore-Colyer and Philip Conford, Massingham was uncomfortable with what he felt was a pro-German tendency in this group. When the Kinship later merged with two other bodies to form the Soil Association, Massingham with Gardiner, the landowner Lord Portsmouth and the agricultural journalist Lawrence Easterbrook came onto the Soil Association's Council.

[edit] Works

  • Letters to X (1919)
  • Dogs, Birds, and Others (1921) letters to The Spectator, editor
  • Some Birds Of The Countryside: The Art Of Nature (1921)
  • Poems About Birds from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (1922) editor
  • Untrodden Ways - Adventures of English Coasts, Heaths and Marshes and Also Among the Works of Hudson, Crabbe and Other Country Writers (1923)
  • Sanctuaries for Birds and How to Make Them (1924)
  • In Praise of England (1924) miscellany
  • H. W. M.: A Selection From the Writings of H. W. Massingham (1925) editor
  • Downland Man (1926)
  • Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum: The Giants in England (1926)
  • The Golden Age: the story of Human Nature (1927)
  • The Heritage of Man (1929)
  • Guide to the Cotswolds. with Clough Williams-Ellis, and others
  • Pre-Roman Britain (1930)
  • The Friend of Shelley: A Memoir of Edward John Trelawny (1930)
  • A Treasury of seventeenth Century English Verse(1931) editor
  • Birds of the Seashore (1931)
  • Wold Without End (1932)
  • London Scene (1933)
  • The Great Victorians (1932) with Hugh Massingahm
  • English Country Fifteen Essays by Various Authors (1934) editor, with H.E. Bates, Edmund Blunden, W. H . Davies. Vita Sackville- West, A. G .Street, John Collier
  • Country (1934)
  • Through the Wilderness (1935)
  • English Downland (1936)
  • The Genius of England (1937)
  • The Writings of Gilbert White of Selborne. (Nonesuch Press, 1938) editor, two volumes with engravings by Eric Ravilious
  • Britain and the Beast (1937) essay volume with A.G. Street,J. M. Keynes, John Moore, E.M. Forster, Clough Williams-Ellis
  • Shepherd's Country: a Record of the Crafts and People of the Hills (1938)
  • Country Relics (1939)
  • A Countryman's Journal (1939)
  • The English Countryside (1939) editor, with Adrian Bell, Harry Batsford, H E Bates. Batsford, Harry; Fry, Charles; Clark, Geoffrey; Warren, C. Henry; Bozman, E. F.; Bell, Adrian; Fairfax- Blakeborough, J)
  • The Sweet Of The Year; March-April, May-June (1939)
  • Chiltern Country (1940)
  • Cotswold Country (1941)
  • Remembrance (1941) autobiography
  • The Fall of the Year (1941)
  • England and the Farmer a symposium (1941) editor, Viscount Lymington, Sir Albert Howard, C. Henry Warren, Adrian Bell, Rolf Gardiner, L. J. Picton and Sir George Stapledon.
  • Field Fellowship (1942)
  • The English Countryman: a Study of the English Tradition (1942)
  • Men of Earth (1943)
  • Tree of Life (1943)
  • This Plot of Earth: A Gardener's Chronicle (1944)
  • The Wisdom of the Fields (1945)
  • Where Man Belongs: Rural Influence On Literature (1946)
  • The Natural Order - Essays in the Return to Husbandry (1946) editor, with Philip Mairet, Lord Northbourne, the Earl of Portsmouth
  • The Countryside and How to Enjoy it
  • The Small Farmer A Survey By Various Hands (1947) editor
  • An Englishman's Year (1948)
  • The Curious Traveller (1950)
  • The Faith of a Fieldsman (1951)
  • Shakespeare Country, The, Including the Peak and the Cotswolds (1951)
  • The Southern Marches (1952)
  • Prophesy Of Famine: a Warning and the Remedy (1953) with Edward Hyams
  • The Essential Gilbert White of Shelborne (1983) editor, selected by Mark Daniel
  • Fifteen Poems (Hayloft Press 1987)
  • A Mirror of England: an anthology of the Writings of H. J. Massingham (1882-1952) edited by Edward Abelson (1988)

[edit] External link

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